Under the concept, residents of the mixed commercial zone along Southeast Ankeny Street wouldn’t be allowed to buy permits to park cars on nearby residential streets unless there were spaces left unused by nearby residents.(Photo: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

After months of research and discussion with a massive stakeholders’ group, the Portland Bureau of Transportation on Thursday circulated its first concept for how to deal with shortages of free on-street car parking in some neighborhoods.

The proposal, which the city described Friday as “preliminary,” combines two main ideas:

1) Neighborhoods would get the option to vote to start charging themselves a yet-to-be-determined amount for overnight street parking, and

2) people who live in most of the buildings along commercial corridors wouldn’t get to park in permit-parking areas overnight unless people who live in nearby residences don’t want the space.

The second aspect, which is arguably the defining concept of the proposal, would be accomplished through the city’s zoning code. In any new parking district, residents of buildings in “residential” zones would get the first chance to purchase parking permits. But mixed-use, industrial and employment zones — zones that line almost every crowded commercial corridor in Portland where street parking is scarce — wouldn’t be included in the parking district. This would mean residents there would only be able to purchase parking permits if the “supply” of local parking spaces on nearby residential blocks (as determined by the city) exceeds the “demand” from residential zones.

“Any blockface within the permit area that fronts a residentially‐zoned property could be signed for use by permit holders,” the city’s proposal explains.

For example, here’s a map of the zoning on North Mississippi Avenue. Mixed-use and industrial zones, whose residents would be last in line for parking permits, are marked in red and purple. Residential areas, further from the Mississippi corridor, are marked in other colors.

The permit plan doesn’t offer solutions for what to do about parking on the commercial streets themselves. Options could include meters, shorter-term parking areas, shared off-street parking and other tools.

“Meters are a separate issue,” city project manager Grant Morehead wrote in an email Friday, by way of a city spokesman. He said the neighborhood stakeholder group will tackle that subject in September.

Two other key issues that hasn’t yet been tackled: how much the permits would cost and where the money would go.

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Portland’s proposed parking reform could have major long-term impacts on the way the city grows and develops. For example, as our series on the Lloyd District has shown, the transition to paid parking in 1997 was arguably the most important change that set that area on the path to its imminent redevelopment into a dense, potentially bike-oriented urban area.

“If this was the permit program we had in place five years ago, the Division Street battle over parking might have turned out a lot differently.”— Tony Jordan, centers and corridors stakeholder advisory committee

Advocates for dense, bikeable development hope that paid parking permits will be a way for central Portland neighborhoods to keep adding new housing without also setting aside more and more space for free or cheap car parking.

“If this was the permit program we had in place five years ago, the Division Street battle over parking might have turned out a lot differently,” said Tony Jordan, a member of the city’s stakeholder groups who has advocated for the city to start phasing out its subsidy of auto parking by charging people to store cars on the street. “Armed with the opportunity to permit up as construction set in, neighbors in affected areas might have incentivized developers to add parking or truly work to attract car-free tenants. In areas where the proverbial animals have already left the barn, a system like this will hopefully put pressure on the current landlords to do the latter.”

The detailed proposal from Morehead starts on page 8 of this PDF. Morehead circulated the concept in an email Thursday to members of the “centers and corridors” stakeholder advisory group that has been advising the city on parking reform.

Here’s a crucial passage in the proposal, in which Morehead describes the way that residents of buildings along a corridor might be able to buy parking permits after residents of homes off the corridor have had their chance:

The total number of permits issued within an area would be capped, based on a standard formula that is related to the total supply of on‐street parking. The concept does not include a cap on the number of permits issued to any one address; rather, it proposes a progressive pricing scheme (the second permit would cost more than the first, the third would cost more than the second, etc.). Properties with available off‐street parking would automatically start at the rate for a second permit. Daily guest permits would be available; these are typically sold in packets of 10.

If demand for permits exceeds supply, a waiting list would be maintained. If supply of permits exceeds demand, a neighborhood could decide to sell surplus permits to people outside the area. That would be a detail to be worked out in each implementation plan.

How often would demand for parking permits exceed supply in a given district? That’s hard to say, because if people had to pay for curbside parking permits, they might be more likely to park in garages and driveways, or less likely to have cars at all. However, here’s a map (prepared for the stakeholder advisory committee) that shows the intense demand for the curbside auto parking the city currently provides for free in the Mississippi Avenue area:

“A lot of details remain to be worked out,” Morehead added in the Friday email. “The SAC will surely have a lot to say about this idea.”

]]>http://bikeportland.org/2015/07/31/city-parking-reform-proposal-limit-apartment-dwellers-access-parking-permits-154545/feed107Car2go’s firestorm over shrunken service area reawakens concerns about bikeshare coveragehttp://bikeportland.org/2015/07/31/car2gos-firestorm-shrunken-service-area-reawakens-concerns-bikeshare-coverage-154535 http://bikeportland.org/2015/07/31/car2gos-firestorm-shrunken-service-area-reawakens-concerns-bikeshare-coverage-154535#commentsFri, 31 Jul 2015 18:57:14 +0000http://bikeportland.org/?p=154535The company is slicing its Portland service area by about a third.Sponsor BikePortland.org. Advertise here.

The company said that areas east of 60th Avenue and northwest of Portsmouth, including Montavilla, Cully, Lents and St. Johns, had accounted for only 8 percent of trips and that 90 percent of car2go users surveyed said they were unsatisfied with vehicle availability. The company says that eliminating the least-used parts of the service area will lead to more car density in the remaining areas.

But that didn’t prevent digital howls Friday from disappointed users of the service — some of whom compared the problem to the one that’ll be faced by any future bikesharing system in Portland, too.

@car2go@car2goPortland Epic fail on cutting services in the Portland area. You take our fees and then take away the service, Stay Classy!

Car2go created this graphic to explain their argument for shrinking their service area.

It’s worth noting that the car2go area has changed many times since the service’s 2012 launch. When it began, its north boundary was Killingsworth Street and its east boundary was 82nd Avenue, so much of North, Northeast and East Portland were excluded from the start. But the ongoing expansion of car2go’s service area had instilled confidence in many Portlanders that the service’s boundaries were getting larger, not smaller — an evolution that maybe seemed to make up for the fact that its prices had risen from 35 to 41 cents per minute.

Last December, we reported that Portland was the car2go capital of North America when it came to vehicles per square mile. Car2go didn’t respond to a question on Twitter about the size of its Portland fleet going forward.

It’s not clear how the arrival of ridesourcing services Uber and Lyft in Portland this summer has or will effect demand for car2go. Like car2go, Uber has said it is likely to add bike racks to many of its vehicles in an effort to facilitate multimodal trips.

As the City of Portland keeps trying to move toward the launch of a privately operated public bikeshare system — and as the startup Spinlister prepares to launch the country’s first fully private bike-sharing system in Portland — the talk about how much control the public can expect or demand over its shared transportation services is only going to continue.

For Oregon’s roads, the first seven months of 2015 have been the deadliest since 2008.

That was the year nominal gas prices hit their all-time peak, which sent suburban housing markets and the financial sector that had financed them into a tailspin that eventually sent the world economy into recession.

Gas prices dipped for a year but returned to the high $3 range by 2011. Expensive gas and the weak economy combined with long-brewing changes in how people live and get around to create years of decline in the number of miles driven both in Oregon and around the country.

But after last November’s gas price plunge, the number of miles driven is on the rise again. And so, apparently, is the number of people dying on the road.

Troy Costales, manager of the Oregon Department of Transportation’s safety division, said Oregon saw 238 road deaths through July 23, up from 165 in the same period last year.

“There are reports that traffic fatalities are up across the nation,” he added. “I wish neither was true.”

In Portland, the long-term traffic fatality trend has been different: it fell rapidly in the late 1990s and, aside from a 2003 spike, has hovered in the 20s and 30s per year since. Numbers for Portland proper weren’t immediately available Friday.

“If the numbers are flat or going up, then that’s a stubborn problem and it’s time for some broader range of solutions.”— Gerik Kransky, Bicycle Transportation Alliance

For the last two years, the Oregon Department of Transportation has faced calls from some safety advocates to rethink its traffic safety practices around a set of ideas developed in Sweden and known as Vision Zero.

“If the numbers are flat or going up, then that’s a stubborn problem and it’s time for some broader range of solutions,” said Gerik Kransky, advocacy director for the Bicycle Transportation Alliance. “Until we’re able to do something significant to address those high-speed, high-traffic roads, I’d imagine this is what’s going to happen.”

Kransky said he was disappointed that the state didn’t pass House Bill 2736, which would have created an external process to explore Vision Zero at the state level.

“We’ve heard a little bit of talk from our partners at ODOT that there’s talk of setting a target date for zero injuries and fatalities in their upcoming traffic safety action plan, and that’s great,” Kransky said. “My fear is that right now, we haven’t seen ODOT step forward with a willingness to pursue the solutions that are shown to work in other countries. … We’re not going to change the fatality rate in Oregon simply by setting a traffic date.”

This menu of delicious rides and events is brought to you by our friends at Hopworks Urban Brewery. Their support makes BikePortland possible.

The peak of summer isn’t letting us go yet. This week’s heat wave will continue through this first weekend of August before slackening off. It’s a perfect reminder to savor what we’ve got, at least in between gulps of water. There’s plenty of outdoor fun to choose from.

Memorial for Marlene Popps – 4:30 pm at SE Foster and Holgate (at 63rd) A commemoration for the victim of a July 4 hit and run and for all the 30 people who’ve died on Oregon roads in July. BikePortland coverage here; more info here.

Portland Bike Party Raging Waters Ride – 7-9 p.m. at Holladay Park fountain (NE Multnomah between 11th and 13th, south of the Lloyd Center Mall) Dress to get wet and beat the heat with the help of several of Portland’s landmark fountains. Finishes downtown, followed by pizza. More info here.

Saturday, Aug. 1

Greenway intersection painting party – 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday at NE 53rd and Everett The North Tabor Neighborhood Association (for which I’m a board member! this is my neighborhood) hosts a two-day painting party and potluck at the intersection of two neighborhood greenways. Bring a chair and get ready to make a street pretty. More info here.

Cascade Creampuff – 5:45 a.m. in Oakridge, OR For 20 years now, this has been one of the country’s toughest mountain bike courses, on 100 miles (including 75 of singletrack) and 18,000 feet of climbing through the Alpine Trail System in Lane County. $209 registration required before mandatory rider’s meeting 5 p.m. Friday. More info here.

Portland Century – 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the University of Portland (5000 N Willamette Blvd) Choose the 50-mile, 80-mile or 100-mile courses through the City of Portland and south along both sides of the Willamette. $89 registration includes support and great local food for breakfast, lunch and a dinner with beer and wine. More info here.

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Sunday, Aug. 2

Blackberry bRamble – 6:30 a.m. at Hilyard Community Center (2580 Hilyard Street Eugene) A ride around Eugene of 100, 62, 40, 20 or 10 miles. Late registration $49 includes support on the longer routes plus a beer ticket and pie with ice cream at the end. More info here.

Redline Flight School Clinic with Jason Carnes – 6-9 p.m. at the Lumberyard (2700 NE 82nd Ave) A travelling instructional clinic led by a professional BMXer. $25. More info here.

— Did we miss anything? Let us know via the comments and make sure to drop us a line if you have an upcoming event you’d like us to feature next week.

]]>http://bikeportland.org/2015/07/31/weekend-event-guide-raging-waters-fountain-ride-intersection-painting-154417/feed3With new ‘Livable Streets’ subgroup, BikeLoud will commemorate road deaths by all modeshttp://bikeportland.org/2015/07/30/new-livable-streets-subgroup-bikeloud-will-commemorate-road-deaths-modes-154421 http://bikeportland.org/2015/07/30/new-livable-streets-subgroup-bikeloud-will-commemorate-road-deaths-modes-154421#commentsThu, 30 Jul 2015 22:15:22 +0000http://bikeportland.org/?p=154421The Facebook page for the new “subgroup”Livable Streets Action. A new group called Livable Streets Action is taking the tactics that have won a string of victories for local biking this spring and summer and applying them to other modes, too. Organizer Dan Kaufman, a videographer and longtime local social justice advocate who has helped Read More »Sponsor BikePortland.org. Advertise here.

A new group called Livable Streets Action is taking the tactics that have won a string of victories for local biking this spring and summer and applying them to other modes, too.

Organizer Dan Kaufman, a videographer and longtime local social justice advocate who has helped organize demonstrations for transportation activism group BikeLoudPDX and the bike-based but non-transportation-focused group Bike Swarm, referred to Livable Streets Action as a “subgroup” of those other groups.

“We will also take this last day of the month to remember the approximately 30 deaths on Oregon roads in July,” Kaufman wrote in his Facebook event description. “So far for the year we are 44% increase in road fatalities over 2014. Motorists account for the most deaths followed closely by pedestrians.”

Portland’s Vision Zero policy, adopted by the city council this year, aims to eliminate traffic deaths of people no matter how they are moving about the city. But in part because bicycling advocates have been particularly loud and well-organized, the issue of traffic safety has come to be closely associated with bicycling, with media reports regularly characterizing general traffic safety protests as being in support of bicycle safety. That’s prompted some discussion among BikeLoud organizers of how to better broaden their message and appeal in some situations.

In an email to the BikeLoudPDX listserv, Kaufman wrote that he hopes Livable Streets Action “can develop into a coalition of groups interested direct action in the support of liveable streets.”

Kaufman noted that Popps’ son Mike Neldon is working to raise $5000 for her memorial, and asked that people attending Friday’s action “bring a hat or bucket to help collect funds and a sign that indicates why you are there. We will be marching, collecting donations, and raising awareness at the crash site and around the intersection of SE Holgate and Foster.”

Bike commuters may dominate in some bohemian enclaves but across the city they make up just six percent of the total. This is stellar by U.S. standards – ten times the norm, in fact – but in comparison with, say, Copenhagen, it’s not even in the same galaxy.

Stats can be misleading though. When riding around Portland it’s clear this is a city where, in certain areas, cycling is perfectly normal, not just for getting to work but for running errands or riding to a night out. Bars and shops have bike-corrals (rows of cycle parking hoops instead of car parking spaces) and the light rail system is geared up to take bikes. Portland’s six percent modal share has to be seen in context – in 1990 it was just 1 percent. Between 2000 and 2008 the civic authority’s proactive bicycle programme helped add the other five percent, and the city has held it at that level ever since. Ten percent of kids cycle to school, nine percentage points higher than the U.S. national average.

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Portland’s rich and diverse cycling cultures will easily maintain the existing modal share. The civic goal is to increase it to 25 percent within the next decade, and that’s a tough ask, even for a city that spawned Pedalpalooza, an annual 250-event from-the-street bike festival.

To increase cycling’s modal share it’s obvious that Portland’s car-use would have to be restricted, and hard infrastructure for cyclists would have to be built. Cycle use would then explode in Portland, profiting the city’s numerous bicycle businesses, making the city even more liveable, and not just for cyclists in gluten-free kilts.

It’s a nicely balanced piece that also describes our annoyingly but usefully fractured street grid as “staccato,” which I love. Check it out — and check out that book of Carlton’s, too, which has a tablet version with photos and video that pushes the boundaries of what a modern history book can and should be like.

Update 5:45 p.m.: Police now say that only the southeast sidewalk (upstream, closer to downtown Portland) is closed and that officers were mistaken when they previously blocked people from crossing the bridge on bike or foot.

“It was just that someone didn’t get told,” Portland Police Bureau spokesman Sgt. Greg Stewart said Wednesday evening. “We’re just having people use the other side of the street.”

An updated version of the original post follows.

Some Portland police officers ordered the sidewalks of the St. Johns bridge closed to foot and bike traffic in response to a direct action on the bridge Wednesday.

Late Wednesday, police changed their operation and closed only the southeast (upstream) sidewalk to people on foot or bike.

The action, organized by environmental group Greenpeace, aims to block a Shell Oil ship from heading to the Arctic. The Oregonian and other outlets reported Wednesday that activists are prepared to remain dangling from the bridge by rope for days. A police spokesman said the sidewalks would remain closed until the rope-sitters are gone.

The bridge is the only bike-foot crossing of the Willamette River between Longview, 50 miles to the northwest, and the Broadway Bridge in downtown Portland. The lanes of the bridge, which have relatively high speeds and low-visibility but are marked with sharrows, remain open to people on bikes and in motor vehicles.

Hamilton described the Greenpeace action as “to stop an icebreaker from leaving for the polar ice cap, or at least what’s left of it.”

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Sharrows were added to the St. Johns Bridge in 2012.

Portland Police Bureau spokesman Sgt. Greg Stewart said Wednesday that his understanding is that police officers will be stationed at the sidewalks on the bridge landings, turning sidewalk traffic back. Stewart said there are “several” reasons to close the sidewalks, but that the “primary” one is the safety of the demonstrators.

“The ropes are accessible, and there could be conflict between the parties up there and other people crossing,” Stewart said. “We want to be extra certain given that they’re hanging, it looks like a couple hundred feet in the air, that they’re safe.”

“There’s a whole host of things that can happen when people are 300 feet over a railing and things are really tense,” Stewart said. “Until that’s resolved, there won’t be any pedestrian traffic.”

Oregon Department of Transportation spokesman Don Hamilton said Wednesday that his agency, which oversees the bridge, is complying with a police request early this morning to close the sidewalk.

Biking fans won’t find many surprises in the piece, though that doesn’t diminish the accomplishment of interviewees like Kyle Carlson, a recent Friday Profile subject here at BikePortland who bikes 39 miles from Hillsboro to North Portland and back several times a week.

But one passage in the post is a little unfamiliar in Portland’s transportation conversation these days. It’s the simple but (for some reason) rarely discussed fact that if Portland doesn’t decrease the percentage of trips that happen by car, everybody who actually needs to get around by car or truck is going to be screwed.

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From the piece’s interview with Jason Gast, a 48-mile-a-day Portland-to-Hillsboro bike commuter:

“Washington County is doing a lot to make lanes safer. But for a lot of folks they would be scared,” says Gast. He has done this commute for the past five years and noticed more cars on the road as well as more cyclists. Gast chooses to commute to work partly because he finds road traffic so frustrating. “The traffic situation in our area is not getting any better,” he says. “I can never see myself being a car commuter.”

Portland’s population is expected to grow by 280,000 in the next decade, creating a transportation headache for city planners. The Portland Bureau of Transportation is heading an initiative to create a network of biking and pedestrian trails in Portland city center and the central eastside to encourage people to commute by bike and public transit instead of driving.

Again, people already attuned to Portland transportation policy are not going to be gobsmacked by this revelation. Which is exactly why it’s so odd that “when biking is easy, it makes driving easier too” is so absent from our civic conversation.

I got home a few hours ago from a two-week vacation in Colombia (more on that in the next couple days) and it was as intense a reminder as I’ve had of the cost drivers face in cities that are rapidly adding residents but not investing in space-efficient transportation infrastructure like bike facilities and mass transit. Though many people in and around Portland seem open to the concept that if you hate congestion you should love bicycles, it’s not an idea we often hear from most local leaders. In fact, our region’s organized business advocates and some suburban politicians often seem fixated on the fantasy of perpetual automobile capacity. Hopefully some of those folks — or at least the generation that’s slowly moving in to succeed them — are reading Oregon Business.

Johnathan Dubouis in March 2015 in Waterfront Park under the Burnside Bridge. He asked to pose with these bolt-cutters, which PPB officers photographed as evidence prior to arresting him.(Photo: Portland Police Bureau)

The Portland Police have nabbed one of our city’s most prolific bike thieves: 29-year old Johnathan Marcel Dubouis. Dubouis was arrested on Sunday night, just about 24 hours after he appeared in security camera footage stealing a woman’s bike in southwest Portland.

Screengrab from KGW story.

On Saturday evening, KGW-TV ran a story about a bike theft that happened in front of the Multnomah Athletic Club in Goose Hollow. The segment aired footage from the club’s security camera that showed a man committing the theft. His long red hair was unmistakable for those of us that know Dubouis from his previous activities.

Back in November 2014 I recovered my own bike from underneath the I-5 overpass adjacent to the Eastbank Esplanade. With my bike firmly in hand I rode past some people who live under the freeway near the Hawthorne Bridge. As I did, Dubouis poked his head up. I knew his face from a “hot sheet” of known bike thieves the PPB had sent around to local bike shops.

Dubouis noticed me as I rode slowly past because I was ghost-riding a bike with one hand. Still upset at having my bike stolen, I asked him what he and others were doing with so many bikes and bike parts. He said they were just fixing up bikes that people people donate to them. When I told him mine had been stolen and I was suspicious that perhaps he knew something about it, he became upset and told me to leave. So I did; but not before hearing him rattle off a bunch of things about my bike. He was listing its features and components as if to impress me with his bike knowledge (instead, it just confirmed for me that he’s probably the guy who stole my bike).

A few days later I returned to the Esplanade (underneath the Burnside Bridge) to check on a tip about a pile of bikes underneath a tarp. As I poked around the tarp, someone appeared from under the bridge. It was Dubouis. On that occasion we chatted for several minutes. I told him I wanted to learn more about bike theft in Portland. He said he knew people that were involved in it; but that he personally was just liked fixing them up and collecting vintage parts. He admitted to me he’d been arrested for bike theft but that he was always let go due to lack of evidence or proof of his guilt.

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Since that meeting, Dubouis has been arrested twice for bike theft.

On the night March 13th, he was taken into custody after PPB Officers Dave Bryant and Dave Sanders (the two Central Precinct officers we work with on the Bike Theft Task Force) questioned him about some suspicious bicycles he was working on under the west end of the Burnside Bridge. These officers know Dubouis well and have arrested him for bike theft “multiple times” before.

In the arrest report filed after that March 13th arrest, Ofcr. Sanders shared this interesting back-and-forth (emphases mine):

“While we were talking with Dubois [sic]… he would periodically fiddle with his bike. Welsh [another man they’ve arrested for bike theft in the past] and Dubois both asked us questions about the media attention regarding bike theft and we discussed this issue with them at length. At one point, I asked Dubois what his solution was to addressing bike theft in the city and he said, “I’d tell ’em to stop stealing the shitty bikes, and just go after the nice ones”. He said that anyone who locks up a $3000 bike with a cable lock ‘won’t make that mistake twice’. He told me on his own to the effect of ‘I’m not saying I’ve never stolen a bike before’. To this, I asked him how many bikes he’s stolen. He said “about seven”. Additionally, he told me he has stolen bike components before as well, and then proceeded to make fun of people who left bike lights, etc. on their bikes. Dubois told me he does not steal bikes anymore, though.”

The officers also found a pair of large bolt-cutters in Dubouis’ possession. Sanders wanted to photograph them as evidence and Dubouis requested to pose in the photo.

Dubouis’ latest arrest for bike theft was on Sunday night. Sanders said the video allowed them to identify Dubouis and go pick him up. Now Sanders is working with the Deputy District Attorney to see what type of charges might apply. In Oregon, property theft becomes a felony if the stolen items are worth over $1,000.

Even if Dubouis gets the felony charge, his jail sentence won’t amount to much and he’ll soon be back on the street. Even Leroy Parsons, a man the PPB call the “kingpin” of bike theft who admitted stealing expensive bikes on a KGW-TV segment, served just 90 days. (And by the way, Sanders told me at Sunday Parkways that Parsons is back on the streets already.)

These cases illustrate that enforcement isn’t the only tool we need to address bike theft. Bike theft is just the tip of a very large iceberg of failed social policies and a lack of funding for people in need. Both Parsons and Dubouis (and many other people arrested for bike theft) are methamphetamine addicts who need help to treat their abuse and get their lives turned around.

If you’re frustrated, you might like to hear what Ofcr. Sanders had to share about the change he’s noticed in the bureau since the bike theft issue has been given a higher profile:

“I was encouraged that we were able to identify/arrest Dubois based on the video. Also encouraging was the fact that I instantly received emails from officers who recognized Dubois after the video was aired on KGW. That shows an increased awareness of bike theft by officers on the streets and an awareness of those stealing them. Every day around the office, I am hearing officers talking about bike theft cases and sharing information about them — something that was largely absent even several years ago. I hope this trend continues as we promote the problem more to our officers in Portland.”

Educating officers about bike theft is one of the main areas that Ofcr. Sanders and his partner Dave Bryant have focused on as part of their work on the Bike Theft Task Force. That effort is now four months old and continues to grow and get stronger. Stay tuned for more updates.